On Writing: Bits of Joy

Jason on finding out he’s back in a Little Ice Age: Everything is Not Okay, and we’re going to have to struggle to survive, and I am not looking forward to any of it.

Also Jason, on seeing Chae’s library: …I am camping here and never leaving.

You have to know what your heroes fear, what they hate, what mental knots they need to work their way through before they can finally face and defeat outside dangers. But you also have to know what brings your characters joy.

For a swordsman it might be finding the perfect blade, or at last mastering a form he’s only attempted before. For the lady in an arranged marriage, it could be the gradual realization that her husband is as good a man as she hoped for, and just as committed to making this work. For a scholar and historian, several thousand books he’s never read before, many of them primary-source histories written by people on the ground at the time, is a sight to gladden the heart.

(Yes, several thousand. This is not only possible, it’s plausible. We have records of several wealthy merchants from the Ming Dynasty who had upwards of ten thousand volumes. Chae hasn’t always had money, but she’s had time, qiankun pouches, and the ability to wander many, many places selling books.)

Joy is hard to write about. For one thing it’s a relatively ephemeral feeling; if you stop to pin it down to a written page, you may lose it. For another it’s harder for the brain to hang onto long-term; we’re hardwired for survival, not happiness. Our neurochemistry encodes nasty stuff hard, fast and deep so we can hopefully avoid it in the future, while letting happy things fade, so we have to go after them again to regain that feeling. For a third thing – well. A lot of writers are writers because we desperately want to communicate something, and that often means there’s something we are Not Happy about.

But you need to have it in your story. Even if only for instants. The time two lovers breathe together after that first kiss; yes, that really happened, this person wants me. The roar of the crowd as the clock ticks down and the player shifts the last piece, and wins. That moment when your friend’s car goes over the cliff, you fall to your knees… and you see a trembling, dirt-stained hand reach up.

Give your characters joy. Your readers will remember it forever.